There is a moment in Samuel Beckett’s story ‘The Expelled’ in which the hero watches a funeral pass:
Here we have an example of Beckett being delighted by the body’s ability to undo whatever grandeur society or the mind had constructed.
Beckett's great mission was to undo the power of words, some might say, to unseat the fascism that is inherent in language. But we cannot get outside language, even if we were old, very old and dribbling away towards death, our thoughts are in language, did I die last night? I woke up but there is no one here, am I dead, I don't even know when I died. Every self-assertion, leads to a self-cancelling
'I am alive I know I am = self assertion
no, I am dead, dead as a fecking door post = leads to a self-cancelling
They are, the living beings watching the funeral go by.
Cogitating (thinking) is the nightmare from which they are trying to awaken, and Being is a sour trick played on them by some force with whom they are desperately trying not to reckon. Beckett produces infinite comedy about the business of thinking being boring, invalid, quite unnecessary. His characters know they exist because of the discomforts and odd habits of their bodies. In some cases they are left in no doubt.
As stated in reviews of Beckett in the London Review of Books
Personally if I were reduced to making the sign of the cross I would set my heart on doing it right, nose, navel, left nipple, right nipple. But the way they did it, slovenly and wild, he seemed crucified all of a heap, no dignity, his knees under his chin and his hands anyhow ... As for the policeman he stiffened to attention, closed his eyes and saluted ... The horses were farting and shitting as though they were going to the fair.
Here we have an example of Beckett being delighted by the body’s ability to undo whatever grandeur society or the mind had constructed.
Beckett's great mission was to undo the power of words, some might say, to unseat the fascism that is inherent in language. But we cannot get outside language, even if we were old, very old and dribbling away towards death, our thoughts are in language, did I die last night? I woke up but there is no one here, am I dead, I don't even know when I died. Every self-assertion, leads to a self-cancelling
'I am alive I know I am = self assertion
no, I am dead, dead as a fecking door post = leads to a self-cancelling
They are, the living beings watching the funeral go by.
Cogitating (thinking) is the nightmare from which they are trying to awaken, and Being is a sour trick played on them by some force with whom they are desperately trying not to reckon. Beckett produces infinite comedy about the business of thinking being boring, invalid, quite unnecessary. His characters know they exist because of the discomforts and odd habits of their bodies. In some cases they are left in no doubt.
The smell of corpses, distinctly perceptible under those of grass and humus mingled, I do not find unpleasant, a trifle on the sweet side perhaps, a trifle heady, but how infinitely preferable to what the living emit, their feet, teeth, armpits, arses, sticky foreskins and frustrated ovules.
As stated in reviews of Beckett in the London Review of Books
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